Devil's Night
by thexlastxfantasy
Summary: Devil's Night, a.k.a. the night before Halloween, has Tifa on her guard. It doesn't help that the light outside keeps flicking on for no apparent reason. When Coud comes bearing Halloween goodies, she can relax and calm her nerves. Right?


The bar was empty and everything was clean and put away. Tifa sighed and relaxed in her favorite stool with a cup of hot chocolate. It was late October and snow was just beginning to fall. She was looking out a nearby window, seeing nothing but frost on the glass since it was so dark out, when the backdoor motion detector light lit up. She waited a few moments to see if someone would knock, but when no one did she stood up and looked out the peep hole. No one was there.

"Huh, that's strange," she said to herself. Normally, she wouldn't have been bothered by something as simple as that, but tonight was Devil's Night. The night when stupid teenagers and drunken adults came out and destroyed things just for the "fun" of it. The light went off and she returned to the bar counter to finish her drink before heading upstairs to her small apartment above the bar. She was thinking about taking a warm shower when the light went on again. Downing the last of her drink, she stood up and went to the door. But once again, nothing was there.

"Alright, now you're just pissing me off," she stated, walking away to clear her mess. Just to be on the safe side, before going upstairs she placed a chair by the door with a glass mug on it. If someone were to be senseless enough to break in, she would hear the crash and be down here in time to beat the living snot out of the idiot.

An hour and a half later she was in her flannel pajama bottoms with her favorite t-shirt, watching late night sitcom reruns. She ended up taking that hot shower and was about to fall asleep on the couch when she heard what she was dreading she would hear. A glass fell to the ground downstairs accompanied by a loud swear word from what sounded like a man. Within seconds Tifa had sprung from the couch and flew down the staircase with her hands balled into fists. She didn't hesitate to land a punch right in the intruder's face.

"What the hell!?" The man screamed as he fell back outside clutching his left eye. "Tifa! What the hell are you doing?!"

"Oh…oh dear…" When the man fell, he fell into the light on outside and Tifa could clearly see that it was Cloud. "I'll go get some ice."

"Yeah, you do that." He grumbled as he stood back up and closed the door behind him. "What's with the chair and glass?"

There was some clinking of ice when Tifa answered. "The light outside kept coming on and since it's Devil's Night I got a little paranoid. I figured I'd set up a homemade security system. It seems to work pretty well," she smiled as she came back out and handed the bundle of ice to Cloud.

"A little too well if you ask me."

"I must have not heard Fenrir since I was in the shower. What are you doing here, anyway?"

He went over and picked up a bag that he had dropped by the door. "Yuffie gave me some Halloween decorations to give to you since you're having that huge party tomorrow night."

"Why couldn't she have given them to me?"

"She's off hunting down Vincent, and then she's going to drag him off somewhere. I think they're going to that Halloween party the Turks throw every year, but Cid won't give up the notion that they're running off to get married."

"Can you legally marry someone against their will?"

"Apparently to Cid, you can." He lifted the heavy bag up onto the counter top and they began shifting through the bag together.

"This is some pretty cool stuff," Tifa grinned when she pulled out ice cube trays in the shape of pumpkins and bats. "Oooh, I really like this!" She lifted out a box containing giant spiders with the head of a skull. "Cloud, can you help me put these little guys up in the corners of the bar?"

"Sure, you want to add some cobwebs to them?" He lifted an eye brow when he brought his hand out of the bag covered in white cottony stuff.

"I think I found my extra helper for the night," Tifa giggled, removing a large piece of black cloth. She unfolded the wire stand that came with it and draped the cloth over it. After popping on some sickly colored hands at the end of each limb, she took a step back and eyed it.

"Is it supposed to be the Grim Reaper?" Cloud looked at the five foot tall decoration.

"It's missing something. See if there's a sickle in there," she nodded towards the bag. Cloud dug through the bag, but to no avail.

Tifa shrugged, "We can put him outside and point his hands towards the door. He's not completely useless."

"Hold on a minute." Cloud went out the back door and Tifa watched him quizzically. He came back in with his Buster Sword. "This'll look better than a sickle."

Tifa suppressed a giggle, "You're my brilliant hero."

"Now you owe me double; one for punching me in the face, the other for saving your Grim Reaper. Hey, did you get your fog machine running?"

"Yup, and I've rented some strobe lights so this party will be better than last year. Will you be coming this time? It seems like every year you always have a delivery to make."

"I don't enjoy dressing up ever since…that day."

"Was dressing up as a woman really that traumatizing?"

"Oh you have no idea."

"Well this year I'm planning on being the Wicked Witch of the West; would you like to be one of my flying monkeys?"

"No."

"How about the Tin Man?"

"No."

"The Cowardly Lion?"

"…I'll think about it."

They went back to digging through the Halloween decorations. Tifa looked up at the clock and noticed that it was almost four in the morning. She was just about to tell Cloud when a loud crash outside the back door made her jump.

"That sounded like your garbage can," Cloud calmly stated as he flipped through a Halloween recipe booklet. "It's probably some animal, the same one that was turning on your light."

Tifa uncurled her fists, but didn't keep her eyes off the door. Cloud had forgotten to lock it when he returned from getting his sword.

"Or is could be the Boogie Man."

"Shut up Cloud."

"Or Nosferatu, It, Hannibal Lecter, Jason, Hades, Freddie Krueger, Michael Myers, Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Sasquatch, Vlad the Impaler, or Quasimodo."

"Quasimodo isn't scary."

"Then you're thinking of the wrong Quasimodo my dear." Cloud released a dramatic evil laugh that caused Tifa to roll her eyes. "I'm not talking about the one with the hunchback. Oh no, I'm talking about the one that walks around wearing people's teeth around his neck and places their fingernails and toenails over his."

"That's just gross."

"You've never heard the legend of Quasimodo? When I was in training for SOLDIER that's all I ever heard. Every. Single. Halloween. Heck, Reno was even in the story."

"Reno's Quasimodo?" Tifa raised an eyebrow.

Cloud snorted trying to hide his laugh. "No, but you know how he has those red marks near his eyes?"

"Yeah."

"Well the rumor goes that he got those from Quasimodo."

"I always heard that he had them tattooed when he was drunk."

"Well, I'll tell you what I heard." He sat down on a stool and waited for Tifa to join him. When she got comfortable he started, "About one hundred years ago, there was an old asylum and Quasimodo was one of the inmates. He was locked up for breaking into people's houses that had little children and stealing the teeth underneath their pillows. Apparently he had an obsession with teeth. After being locked up for twenty-two years, the asylum was shut down and all the inmates were released onto the streets."

"Okay, this just went from gross to creepy. He didn't hurt the kids, did he?"

"Not yet. He lived in the abandoned asylum for a while, but then it caught fire and he was burned alive. Somehow he managed to get out, but all of his skin was burnt; it was charred, bleeding, and oozing bodily fluids."

"And now we're back to it being gross."

"The whole society shunned him, and he was furious. So he started to steal homeless people in the night. He wanted their teeth, but since homeless people don't have the best dental hygiene, all their teeth were gone and he was forced to take the next best thing: their nails. He tore all twenty of them off when they were still alive and glued them over his nails. Then he would keep them tied up and slowly eat them, piece by-"

"Cloud stop. I'm going to throw up."

"Anyway, he wanted teeth. And the only way he could get teeth would be by stealing people that could afford a toothbrush. So he began to kidnap normal people and tortured them in the same way. He would take their teeth and drill holes in them so he could wear them as jewelry. Because he was eating the flesh off the people when they were alive, he became immortal. Now fast forward to present time. Quasimodo traveled around a lot and came into Shinra's area. One of Rufus's friends was kidnaped and eaten by him, so he wanted revenge. The Turks were sent out to take care of him. After a few days of hunting him out, Reno found him hiding in a city sewer and went down to kill him. Quasimodo had set a trap though, and Reno fell right into it."

"Wait a minute, Reno still has his teeth and fingernails." Tifa narrowed her eyes at Cloud.

"That's because Reno's a Turk and Turks can usually get out of bad situations. But unfortunately, he wasn't able to escape in time to save his face. Quasimodo sliced those two marks on him and ate part of his skin."

"That's disgusting Cloud!" Tifa shrieked.

"Don't you want to hear the end?"

"Not really; I have a feeling that you're going to say that Quasimodo wasn't killed and is still out there. Then you're going to go quiet suddenly and ask if I heard that noise. Finally, when I'm listening you're going to make a loud noise and attempt to scare the crap out of me, which will only cause you another black eye."

"He is still out there, but I wasn't going to risk you marring my face again. I was just going to say," his voice grew lower and deeper, "that you can hear Quasimodo coming by the jingling of the teeth. Then, when he's up at the door, he'll take his many fingernails and claw at it until you come and open it. As soon as you do, he'll jump at you and start biting at your flesh and ripping the teeth out of your head."

He went silent and Tifa glared at Cloud. "Don't. You. Dare." She threatened through gritted teeth.

His eyes grew big and innocent. "I'm not going to do anyt-" He was cut off by the light outside turning on again. "That's just an animal."

She nodded, but felt something uneasy growing inside of her. They sat in silence watching the door. The light turned off and Tifa sighed.

"What was that?" Cloud whispered when a noise sounded at the door.

"I-it's just that animal. You said so yourself."

"Yeah, yeah, that's right…you want to go lock that door?"

Tifa turned her head to look at him. He was nervously chewing the side of his mouth, his eyes glued to the door. She smirked, "Are you scared Cloud?"

"What! No, Quasimodo isn't real."

"Then go lock the door yourself."

Tifa froze; there was a long clawing noise. "Tifa! Lock the door!" Cloud screamed as he curled up on his seat. One look at the pathetic man made her adrenaline start pumping. She rushed to the door and slammed herself against it as she fumbled with the locks. The deadbolt wasn't cooperating with her and she began to panic.

Suddenly, arms came up from behind her and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her away from the lock.

She began thrashing around, trying to get herself free, "Let me go!" She screamed. "Cloud, help!"

She stopped her hysterics when she felt the rumbling laughter coming from the man pressed behind her. "Happy Halloween," Cloud whispered into her ear.

"You jerk," she lightly hit him on the shoulder when he allowed her to turn around in his grip.

"Not many things scare you; I couldn't resist setting you up tonight."

"How'd you get the light to keep turning on?"

"I put a flag underneath it, so every time the wind blew it set it off."

"Ingenious. And the clawing was your hand underneath the counter?"

"Yup," he smirked. "But the black eye wasn't part of the plan."

"I would apologize, but now you kind of deserved it." She broke free of his grip and looked at the clock. It was now going on to five and her heart was still beating a little faster than normal. "You want to stay the night?"

"Are you still scared?"

"…No."

Cloud smirked and wrapped his arm around her shoulder and they headed upstairs to her apartment.

Outside, the light flicked on to reveal a disfigured, scarred creature playing with a flag and teeth.

* * *

**Happy Halloween everybody!**


End file.
